RichCopy Guide

Richcopy is a graphical user interface to a powerful file copying utility that enhances on the Windows Copy function. When a user copies and pastes a file within Windows the standard Windows copy window shows up, and does the copy for you. With no options, limited status reporting, and no error recovery, Microsoft Windows copy is not a good choice for copying large amounts of data, copying over a network, or copying complex file structures with options. This is why RichCopy was created.

Richcopy Uses

RichCopy is intended for large file copy jobs, and offers advanced options that Microsoft Windows copy does not. Error recovery allows the copy job to continue even if there is an error during the job that would have caused Windows to abort the transfer. File copy jobs and options can be saved as profiles and resumed or performed again at a later time. The benefits of RichCopy are geared to advanced users. Windows copy is still the best choice for beginners, or small file copy jobs.

The main window of RichCopy is an overview of the current job’s settings and progress, with basic controls. This list will explain the important parts of the main window.

Richcopy Main Window

Richcopy Main Window

Main settings

Source Path - The folder(s) you want to be copied

Destination Path - The folder you want the files copied to

Copy Options - Which options profile is selected for the current job

Transfer Status

Progress - Individual files progress in percent

Time - Time individual file copy started

Size - File size in bytes

Retry - How many copy retries are left before file is skipped

Path - Files location and file name

Job status (event log)

Time - When each status message appeared

Code - Code number for each success or failure

Description - The brief description of the event

Path - The folder or file the event refers

Richcopy transfer in progress

Transfer statistics

Bottom bar, unmarked sections. Careful how you read this. Richcopy only adds files that are fully completed at 100% to the statistics, so during transfer you may see speed decline when in fact it is not.

Section 1 - Elapsed time for current job

Section 2 - Files completed / Files total

Section 3 - Bytes completed / Bytes total

Section 4 - Transfer speed in bytes/sec

Section 5 - Percent complete

Richcopy Options

The options window for Richcopy can be found in the main window to the right of the “Copy Options” section. The default options will do a good job for most transfers, but they can be tailored to each job’s needs to increase speed and functionality. Changing default settings can cause loss of data if done improperly, so be careful. Here is some info about the different options for RichCopy transfers.

Left side

Creates profiles

Options for Richcopy

This lets you create new profiles for switching back and forth easier

Default source and destination path - A path to be added to transfer list along with profile

Method

Purge - Deletes files from destination if they are not in the source

This has the same effect as deleting the destination before the transfer

Move - Copies files then deletes the source

Consolidate multiple sources

Verify - Verifies each files validity

Mode

Trickle - This is apparently defunct, so leave default

Preprocess - Searches and queues all files before transfer starts

This makes the statistics bar more accurate, and has total %

Wait target - Does not copy until source directories exist

Timer - Starts transfer at a specified time

Thread Number

how many of each task to do at once

Directory Search - How many threads used to search and queue folders and files

Good for complex directory structures, useless for simple directory structure

Directory Copy - The amount of simultaneous transfers to do at once

File Copy - Used to ‘segment’ and multi-copy a single file

This makes transfers with large files faster, and small files slower

This also increases the likelihood of errors by a tiny amount

Semi-Advanced options

Ignore READ-ONLY flag - Allows files to be over-written if they exist in destination and are read-only

Directory creation only - does not copy files, only directories

Create directory only when it has a child - Does not copy empty folders

Turn off system buffer - Whether to use system cache for copies

Speeds up some transfers but can slow down without a cache to use

Recommend reading the help file, this setting is complicated

Serialize disk access - Whether to write one block of data at a time, or multitask disk writes

Effects only the way the destination is sent the data

Said to improve USB drives, and ATA hard drives

Does not effect how many transfers can operate at once

Copy Always - copy all files

Copy If

Controls how the job decides whether a file will be copied or not. Each section here says to copy a file only if certain conditions are met. Each section is set by default to copy without checking the attribute of the file, “No check”. If the “File size” section is set to “different”, only files with different sizes will be copied.

These filters can speed up transfers by skipping files that don't need to be transferred

Richcopy Advanced Options

Richcopy Advanced Mode

In the main window of RichCopy, at the top bar choose the “View” dropdown and click “Advanced”. This will add options to Richcopy in the “Copy Options” window that allow very fine controls for process priority, files to skip, error handling, and Log settings.

Cache - Number of files to search for and add to cache of items to transfer

Process - Amount of system resources to use

Idle is the lowest amount at 0, and critical is the highest at 5

This will affect other processes on the system

File Attributes and Error Handling

Richcopy File Attribute Filter

Information to be copied

Allows copying file attributes or creating new attributes during copy

Number of retries - how many failures until a copy is abandoned

Period until next try - Seconds to wait until transfer is re-attempted

Errors to cancel process - which errors cause a halt to transfer

Files to be excluded

Richcopy Include or Exclude Files

Offers more filtering of files to be transferred

Others

Richcopy Other Options

Command - Starts a command before or after transfer

FTP - have one side of transfer use FTP

Log settings - Advanced logging setup

RichCopy Help File

This is direct from the help file

RichCopy is designed to help people who copy huge number of files between storage devices directly or indirectly over the network by accelerating copy performance and shorten the time people has to spend for file copy operation. This acceleration has been realized by improving network and storage device utilization with technology used for server services.

This new version has improved copy performance from its previous version by optimizing all processes involved. It has actually improved about 10% from RichCopy version 3.5 which already much faster than any other file copy tools.